


Colour Me In: Brown

by Miss_Mil



Series: Colours [3]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Episode: s10e12 Line in the Sand, Established Relationship, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, She's In The Infirmary Again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2020-03-06 10:06:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18848857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Mil/pseuds/Miss_Mil
Summary: It is the colour of the earth she is buried beneath, and the colour of his hands as he throws a handful of soil on top of her final resting place. It is the tone of the marble slab, the only reminder left on the planet of the remarkable woman who left him behind.





	Colour Me In: Brown

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: 
> 
> A comment left a few days ago prompted me to go back and re-work this fic. Originally posted in 2016, I was slightly horrified when I read it again. I have therefore deleted the old fic, made some changes and re-posted it. 
> 
> It's not perfect, and I haven't written for SG-1 in some time. I'm still not happy with it, although it is probably as good as it is going to get. 
> 
> As for continuing this series... I won't say no, but I'm at that stage where everything I've written for the last twelve months has been utter garbage, and has never made it to the stage of being beta'd or seeing the light of day. 
> 
> TAG to s10e12: Line in the Sand.

* * *

Brown is the colour of the casket he sees in his nightmares.

Smooth, polished oak topped with the Nation’s flag as it is carried along the perfect, green lawn of Arlington. Soldiers flank it on either side, faces stern in the late evening light as they farewell one of their own.

Brown is the colour of unseen horrors in a reality where Carter no longer exists. She is laid to rest inside the gleaming box, never to return to him in a world he doesn’t even want to think about.

It is the colour of the earth she is buried beneath, and the colour of his hands as he throws a handful of soil on top of her final resting place. It is the tone of the marble slab, the only reminder left on the planet of the remarkable woman who left him behind.

Brown haunts his dreams.

He sees it everywhere, surrounding him each night before he falls asleep; the cruelty of his own mind refusing to let the wicked thoughts go. Brown to him is more frightening than black. 

For a world with blackness is one he can survive in. He’s been there before. But one filled with oak-coloured coffins, damp earth and sorrow… he knows that world would destroy him before the day was out.

He cannot visit another tombstone, standing silently as the world around him continues to move.

 

* * *

 

He stares at her silently, unblinking as if he is afraid she will disappear from the very room. The dull light from the infirmary avoids his face, the shadows reflecting his inner turmoil. The realisation - the relief - that the universe is not claiming her just yet is sitting high in his chest, heart thudding along with the beeping of the monitor beside him.

It’s only now that Jack fully understands the terror that Sara experienced each time he returned from a mission, injured or presumed dead – her grieving lessening but not quite finished - when he walked through the door. Although in hindsight, he acknowledges that maybe it was better that way because he was never the one left behind, the anxiety of waiting being etched into his every move.

Now, he is seated behind a desk in an office that’s almost too big, with wide windows and a receptionist and he’s supposed to be content. The stars and their mysteries are left to someone else, and it’s no longer his job to keep her safe.

It says so much more about him that here, under a billion tonnes of rock and brown soil, by her bedside in the middle of the black night, is his contentment.

The terror inside him is so real; the nightmare that she will not come back on her own two legs but rather in that horrible, brown-coloured box is far too close for comfort. He never wants to be the one left behind.

She stirs from under the white sheets, eyes blinking as her face contracts with pain.

“Carter,” he speaks softly, unsure if she is with it enough to hear him.

Her head rolls over to look in his direction, crystal blue eyes watery and unfocused.

“Jack.”

His name has never sounded any better than when it comes from her.

“That bad?”

Two words that are exactly what he doesn’t need to hear. It had been that close that he had jumped on the first plane he could get out of DC, and he isn’t leaving until she is able to walk herself out of here.

The voice of Hank Landry is incised in his mind.

_It’s bad, Jack. You’d better get here._

He nods roughly, flicking a piece of invisible lint from his pants.

God, he doesn’t do this well. He’d give anything to trade places with her.

“Heard one of the Ori soldiers decided he didn’t like your outfit. Decided he should blast a hole in the side of it,” Jack mutters gruffly.

“Knew I should have worn the blue that day,” she quips, the words falling softly from her pale lips.

Jack smiles tightly, and silence descends between them. Her eyes start to close, and he’s almost sure she’s asleep again when she speaks.

“You didn’t need to come,” she whispers.

He doesn’t need to tell her that there was not a chance in hell he’d wait by the phone at a desk in DC, hoping someone would call. He hates that desk, and he refuses to dwell on the fact that it’s also a haunting shade of brown.

“Well I guess the cat’s outta the bag now,” he speaks, and air of humour injected into the sentence as he folds his fingers around his own wrist, rubbing mindlessly at something that isn’t really there. He can still remember the feel of her fingers, squeezing that wrist tightly as she pulled him close, tears softy falling as they’d laid Dad to rest.

It was that night that she’d stayed over at his house, and never left.

How close she had come to almost joining her father…

She gives him a look that tells him she thinks he’s completely lost it.

Their relationship is probably the worst kept secret on base, no thanks in part to both Daniel and Cameron Mitchell. Chances are, even if the rumour had gone unheeded by some, a two-star general all but running into the infirmary would have confirmed it.

He can see the disciplinarily lecture now…

_Conduct most unbecoming of a General in the United States Air Force._

He watches as she moves stiffly, a grimace still marring her delicate features as she struggles to move without pain.

He doesn’t need to tell her how bad it was. How close it was, or how very real the nightmares are becoming for him. She _lived_ it, and it was real enough for her to tell Mitchell about the letters.  

Real enough that she thought she was going to come back through that gate in brown.

He knows she’ll bring it up and try to tell him what her letter to him says. He’s already prepared to shut her down. He doesn’t _want_ to know. That the letter to him would be buried alongside her, forever waiting unopened, sealed in an envelope that would eventually fade to brown.

“You should be more careful out there, Carter,” he says, his hands folded stoically in his lap.

“Didn’t have you to watch my six, General,” she smiles.

The remark is meant to be light-hearted, but it hits him in all the right places.

It _wouldn’t_ have happened if he hadn’t stuck behind a desk, flying a computer and ordering paperwork around.  

If there was one thing in all the world he had been good at, one thing he had done right in his life, it was watching Carter’s behind.

He can sense the steady blue gaze, concern filtering through the space between then and she reaches out slowly, carefully, to take his hand.  He squeezes her hand lightly, avoiding the IV line in the back of her wrist as her intertwine with his.

Even now, after all they have been through together, it still feels forbidden to hold her hand. It feels uncomfortable to expose his worry so openly, and to almost admit that he’s so close to losing it.

“What are these?” he asks curiously, clearing his throat when her knowing gaze becomes too much, flicking his head toward a paper bag on the edge of the small table.

She laughs softly. “Macaroons.”

“Ah. Mitchell?”

She nods. He’d heard through Daniel about the new leader of SG-1, and his penchant for cooking treats that were to be avoided at all costs.

Silence descends again, and her head falls deeper into the fluffy white of the infirmary pillow.

He wants to say so much more to her, to tell her that she frightened him more today than ever before. That he is getting too old, and too sick of dreaming of a brown, deathly coloured world to do this anymore.

Retirement is looking pretty darn good.

He watches as her breathing evens out, succumbing to sleep and he knows deep down that Carter will be okay.

_They’re_ going to be fine. They will survive this one, and the next one that will inevitably come.

And she is going to keep going through the Stargate, doing her job, whilst he will return to D.C., to his awful bureaucratic, maple desk with his scratchy dress uniform to do his job as well.

Starting from tonight here in the infirmary, and every night before he tries to sleep, he’s going to pray to whatever god – false or not - is out there. And he’s going to hope that he will never, ever would have to live through the day he carries that polished oak coffin down the glistening green lawns of Arlington.

 

* * *

Brown:  _The colour brown is a friendly, yet serious down-to-earth colour that relates to_ _security, protection, comfort and material wealth._

 

**Author's Note:**

> a/n:
> 
> I am Australian, so please don't comment that I spelt 'colour' incorrectly. ;)


End file.
